Press Release

Apple and EMI today announced that the entire catalog of EMI songs on iTunes will be available as 256kbit DRM free AAC files for $1.29, and people who bought past songs can "upgrade" for the $.30 difference.

It's good to see they are actually taking steps now towards unshackling the music. Just a shame the empeg/Karma never got an AAC decoder in them, but most devices these days can play the format, so looking forward, I may look at buying some songs now from iTunes.

This brings an interesting point.

If I buy such an unencumbered track from iTunes, what rights does that give me? Does that mean that I own that file and nothing else, or does that mean I have rights to listen to that piece of music?

The crux of this being: could I then legitimately get a copy of the same piece of music as an MP3?

I would assume it would be the same as a CD. You have a right to that CD, but not to the music. So while it is legal for you to listen to that CD on any device you want and transcode it to MP3, you can't go and download the song in MP3 format from someone else. That was how the my.mp3.com case turned out anyhow.

You should be legally allowed to transcode the downloaded file into whatever you want though. Audio CD, MP3, OGG, etc...

For anyone interested in complete albums, the price is too far off still. US$13 (10 track album) is simply too high for files-only in my opinion.

I'll continue to buying used on eBay and then ripping myself. I don't know what price would leave me happy though. Maybe if AllofMP3 were actually legitimate I could see those being fair.

EDIT: I just read a blurb saying "album" pricing doesn't change, so it would still be $9.99 for "most albums"

There was a blurb about allowing a download of the full album after some critical number of tracks had been purchased.

At least the pricing of songs on iTunes in the UK is being investigated:

http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/business/6520677.stm

My experience with buying used CDs online is that, yeah, you can get the CD for $3, but then they charge you $8 S&H. For that price, I'd rather buy a new one, either at the store, or with free shipping on Amazon.

Bitt, what I usually do is buy my CDs in batches on eBay. I will look for something I'm really interested at the time and then will scan through everything else each of the sellers is offering. This way I can buy multiple discs from one person and save on shipping. The last time I did it, I think I averaged less than $5 per disc after shipping. That included a couple of rare discs I was willing to pay a premium for, which obviously increased the average.

This past weekend I purchased 6 discs from one person in one auction, but it was something I was willing to pay a premium for - and take the time to snipe manually. All 6 CD releases from The Ocean Blue which came out to about $50 with shipping (the seller is even in the province and the discs are probably at my mail box come to think of it.)

Yeah, I agree. I refuse to buy a CD now for more than $14 (unless, maybe, it's a "double-length" CD or something), specifically passing on a few things I wanted because they cost too much. The chances of me buying an album where I don't get lossless encoding or a physical backup for nearly as much are pretty slim. For half as much? Maybe. I'd definitely consider it if I could then pay the difference to get them to send me the physical CD if I wanted.

It launched today, branded "iTunes Plus". There is a setting in iTunes to show Plus music when available. Now if only there was a second choice to show only Plus music for those of us not interested in DRMed files.

Of course, you can remove the DRM with Fairplay, so it's not like it matters a whole lot. (Although I suppose that's technically illegal, I don't care much cause I'm not sharing it, I just want to move my music to my empeg.)

The higher quality might be nice though.